This book is the first volume in the “unmourning” trilogy. Here, the text studies mourning and melancholia within and around psychoanalysis, analyzing the writings of such thinkers as Freud, ...
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This book is the first volume in the “unmourning” trilogy. Here, the text studies mourning and melancholia within and around psychoanalysis, analyzing the writings of such thinkers as Freud, Nietzsche, Lessing, Heinse, Artaud, Keller, Stifter, Kafka, and Kraus. The book maintains that we must shift the way we read literature, philosophy, and psychoanalysis to go beyond traditional Oedipal structures. The book argues that the idea of the crypt has had a surprisingly potent influence on psychoanalysis, and it shows how society’s disturbed relationship with death and dying, our inability to let go of loved ones, has resulted in technology to form more and more crypts for the dead by preserving them—both physically and psychologically—in new ways.Less

Aberrations of Mourning

Laurence A. Rickels

Published in print: 2011-07-13

This book is the first volume in the “unmourning” trilogy. Here, the text studies mourning and melancholia within and around psychoanalysis, analyzing the writings of such thinkers as Freud, Nietzsche, Lessing, Heinse, Artaud, Keller, Stifter, Kafka, and Kraus. The book maintains that we must shift the way we read literature, philosophy, and psychoanalysis to go beyond traditional Oedipal structures. The book argues that the idea of the crypt has had a surprisingly potent influence on psychoanalysis, and it shows how society’s disturbed relationship with death and dying, our inability to let go of loved ones, has resulted in technology to form more and more crypts for the dead by preserving them—both physically and psychologically—in new ways.

Traditional narratives of the period leading up to the Civil War are invariably framed in geographical terms. The sectional descriptors of the North, South, and West, like the wartime categories of ...
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Traditional narratives of the period leading up to the Civil War are invariably framed in geographical terms. The sectional descriptors of the North, South, and West, like the wartime categories of Union, Confederacy, and border states, mean little without reference to a map of the United States. This book contends that antislavery writers consistently refused those standard terms. Through the idiom this book names “abolitionist geography,” these writers instead expressed their dissenting views about the westward extension of slavery, the intensification of the internal slave trade, and the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law by appealing to other anachronistic, partial, or entirely fictional north-south and east-west axes. Abolitionism’s West, for instance, rarely reached beyond the Mississippi River, but its East looked to Britain for ideological inspiration, its North habitually traversed the Canadian border, and its South often spanned the geopolitical divide between the United States and the British Caribbean. The book traces this geography of dissent through the work of Martin Delany, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Wells Brown, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, among others. This book explores new relationships between New England transcendentalism and the British West Indies; African-American cosmopolitanism, Britain, and Haiti; sentimental fiction, Ohio, and Liberia; John Brown’s Appalachia and circum-Caribbean marronage.Less

Abolitionist Geographies

Martha Schoolman

Published in print: 2014-10-01

Traditional narratives of the period leading up to the Civil War are invariably framed in geographical terms. The sectional descriptors of the North, South, and West, like the wartime categories of Union, Confederacy, and border states, mean little without reference to a map of the United States. This book contends that antislavery writers consistently refused those standard terms. Through the idiom this book names “abolitionist geography,” these writers instead expressed their dissenting views about the westward extension of slavery, the intensification of the internal slave trade, and the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law by appealing to other anachronistic, partial, or entirely fictional north-south and east-west axes. Abolitionism’s West, for instance, rarely reached beyond the Mississippi River, but its East looked to Britain for ideological inspiration, its North habitually traversed the Canadian border, and its South often spanned the geopolitical divide between the United States and the British Caribbean. The book traces this geography of dissent through the work of Martin Delany, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Wells Brown, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, among others. This book explores new relationships between New England transcendentalism and the British West Indies; African-American cosmopolitanism, Britain, and Haiti; sentimental fiction, Ohio, and Liberia; John Brown’s Appalachia and circum-Caribbean marronage.

Academic Profiling focuses on the schooling experiences and relationships between the two fastest growing groups in the United States—Asian Americans and Latinas/os. At a time when politicians and ...
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Academic Profiling focuses on the schooling experiences and relationships between the two fastest growing groups in the United States—Asian Americans and Latinas/os. At a time when politicians and pundits debate the sources of an achievement gap, Academic Profiling turns our attention to students, teachers, and parents to learn about the opportunity and social gaps within schools. In candid and at times heart-wrenching detail, students in a California public high school share stories of support and neglect on their paths to graduation. Separated by unequal middle schools and curriculum tracking, students are divided by race/ethnicity, class, and gender. While those in an International Baccalaureate Program boast about socratic classes and stress release-sessions, students outside of such programs bemoan unengaged teaching and inaccessible counselors. Labeled “the elite,” “regular,” “smart,” or “stupid,” students encounter differential policing and assumptions based on their abilities. These disparities are compounded by the growth in the private tutoring industry where wealthier families can afford to spend thousands of dollars to enhance their children’s opportunities, furthering an accumulation of privileges. However, in spite of the entrenchment of inequality in today’s schools, Academic Profiling uncovers multiple forms of resilience and the ways that students and teachers are affirming identities, creating alternative spaces, and fostering critical consciousness. As the story of this California high school unfolds, we also learn about the possibilities and limits of change when Gilda L. Ochoa shares the research findings with the high school.Less

Gilda L. Ochoa

Published in print: 2013-10-01

Academic Profiling focuses on the schooling experiences and relationships between the two fastest growing groups in the United States—Asian Americans and Latinas/os. At a time when politicians and pundits debate the sources of an achievement gap, Academic Profiling turns our attention to students, teachers, and parents to learn about the opportunity and social gaps within schools. In candid and at times heart-wrenching detail, students in a California public high school share stories of support and neglect on their paths to graduation. Separated by unequal middle schools and curriculum tracking, students are divided by race/ethnicity, class, and gender. While those in an International Baccalaureate Program boast about socratic classes and stress release-sessions, students outside of such programs bemoan unengaged teaching and inaccessible counselors. Labeled “the elite,” “regular,” “smart,” or “stupid,” students encounter differential policing and assumptions based on their abilities. These disparities are compounded by the growth in the private tutoring industry where wealthier families can afford to spend thousands of dollars to enhance their children’s opportunities, furthering an accumulation of privileges. However, in spite of the entrenchment of inequality in today’s schools, Academic Profiling uncovers multiple forms of resilience and the ways that students and teachers are affirming identities, creating alternative spaces, and fostering critical consciousness. As the story of this California high school unfolds, we also learn about the possibilities and limits of change when Gilda L. Ochoa shares the research findings with the high school.

The first in the four-part series, this book charts the social, cultural, and political expression of clothing as seen on the street and in museums, in films and literature, and in advertisements and ...
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The first in the four-part series, this book charts the social, cultural, and political expression of clothing as seen on the street and in museums, in films and literature, and in advertisements and magazines. The book features a close-up focus on accessories—the shoe, the hat, the necklace—intimately connected to the body. The chapters here offer new theoretical and historical takes on the role of clothing, dress, and accessories in the construction of the modern subject. The book offers array of ideas about the modern body and the ways in which we dress it. From perspectives on the “model body” to Sonia Delaunay’s designs, from Fascist-era Spanish women’s prescribed ways of dressing to Futurist vests, from Barbara Stanwyck’s anklet to Salvatore Ferragamo’s sandals, from a poet’s tiara to a worker’s cap, from the scarlet letter to the yellow star: this book imparts startling insights into how much the most modest accessory might reveal.Less

Accessorizing the Body : Habits of Being I

Published in print: 2011-07-06

The first in the four-part series, this book charts the social, cultural, and political expression of clothing as seen on the street and in museums, in films and literature, and in advertisements and magazines. The book features a close-up focus on accessories—the shoe, the hat, the necklace—intimately connected to the body. The chapters here offer new theoretical and historical takes on the role of clothing, dress, and accessories in the construction of the modern subject. The book offers array of ideas about the modern body and the ways in which we dress it. From perspectives on the “model body” to Sonia Delaunay’s designs, from Fascist-era Spanish women’s prescribed ways of dressing to Futurist vests, from Barbara Stanwyck’s anklet to Salvatore Ferragamo’s sandals, from a poet’s tiara to a worker’s cap, from the scarlet letter to the yellow star: this book imparts startling insights into how much the most modest accessory might reveal.

This book provides a philosophical and historical account of early photography in India that focuses on how aesthetic experiments in colonial photography changed the nature of perception. Considering ...
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This book provides a philosophical and historical account of early photography in India that focuses on how aesthetic experiments in colonial photography changed the nature of perception. Considering photographs from the Sepoy Revolt of 1857 along with landscape, portraiture, and famine photography, this book explores larger issues of truth, memory, and embodiment. This book scrutinizes the colonial context to understand the production of sense itself, proposing a new theory of interpreting the historical difference of aesthetic forms. In rereading colonial photographic images, it shows how the histories of colonialism became aesthetically, mimetically, and perceptually generative. It suggests that photography arrived in India not only as a technology of the colonial state but also as an instrument that eventually extended and transformed sight for photographers and the body politic, both British and Indian.Less

Afterimage of Empire : Photography in Nineteenth-Century India

Zahid R. Chaudhary

Published in print: 2012-02-01

This book provides a philosophical and historical account of early photography in India that focuses on how aesthetic experiments in colonial photography changed the nature of perception. Considering photographs from the Sepoy Revolt of 1857 along with landscape, portraiture, and famine photography, this book explores larger issues of truth, memory, and embodiment. This book scrutinizes the colonial context to understand the production of sense itself, proposing a new theory of interpreting the historical difference of aesthetic forms. In rereading colonial photographic images, it shows how the histories of colonialism became aesthetically, mimetically, and perceptually generative. It suggests that photography arrived in India not only as a technology of the colonial state but also as an instrument that eventually extended and transformed sight for photographers and the body politic, both British and Indian.

This book presents a passionate defense of radical ecology that speaks directly to current debates concerning the nature, and dangers, of sovereign power. Engaging the work of Bataille, Arendt, ...
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This book presents a passionate defense of radical ecology that speaks directly to current debates concerning the nature, and dangers, of sovereign power. Engaging the work of Bataille, Arendt, Levinas, Nancy, and Agamben, among others, the book reconnects the political critique of sovereign power with ecological considerations, arguing that ethical and political responsibilities for the consequences of our actions do not end with those defined as human. The book turns Agamben’s analysis of sovereignty and biopolitics toward an investigation of ecological concerns. In doing so, it exposes limits to that thought, maintaining that the increasingly widespread biopolitical management of human populations has an unrecognized ecological analogue—reducing nature to a “resource” for human projects. The book contends that a radical ecological politics must resist both the depoliticizing exercise of sovereign power and the pervasive spread of biopolitics in order to reveal new possibilities for creating healthy human and nonhuman communities.Less

Against Ecological Sovereignty : Ethics, Biopolitics, and Saving the Natural World

Mick Smith

Published in print: 2011-10-17

This book presents a passionate defense of radical ecology that speaks directly to current debates concerning the nature, and dangers, of sovereign power. Engaging the work of Bataille, Arendt, Levinas, Nancy, and Agamben, among others, the book reconnects the political critique of sovereign power with ecological considerations, arguing that ethical and political responsibilities for the consequences of our actions do not end with those defined as human. The book turns Agamben’s analysis of sovereignty and biopolitics toward an investigation of ecological concerns. In doing so, it exposes limits to that thought, maintaining that the increasingly widespread biopolitical management of human populations has an unrecognized ecological analogue—reducing nature to a “resource” for human projects. The book contends that a radical ecological politics must resist both the depoliticizing exercise of sovereign power and the pervasive spread of biopolitics in order to reveal new possibilities for creating healthy human and nonhuman communities.

Agitating Images explores the early history of Communist organization among small dispersed groups of indigenous Evenki peoples of Central Siberia. It draws this history into an examination of the ...
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Agitating Images explores the early history of Communist organization among small dispersed groups of indigenous Evenki peoples of Central Siberia. It draws this history into an examination of the destabilizing role of photographs in the production of history. While documenting the development of Soviet Nationalities policy in context of people who were considered to be socially and technologically ‘backwards,’ the project is resolutely committed to the demonstration of what I call photographic agitation. It performs this agitation all the while presenting a ‘nervous’ history of the momentous encounter between Soviet socialism and indigenous peoples in the Siberian North. This book will have broad appeal. Not only is it the first book to present a comprehensive treatment of the remote soviet outpost called the Culture Base but it adds to a lively historical and ethnological discourse on the colonial experience of the indigenous minorities of the Siberian North. Scholars working on histories of soviet socialism will be interested in this book for its counter-narrative of socialist modernity. For scholars interested in photography’s colonial histories, Agitating Images demonstrates the muddy role of photography in producing coherent scopic regimes.Less

Agitating Images : Photography against History in Indigenous Siberia

Craig Campbell

Published in print: 2014-09-01

Agitating Images explores the early history of Communist organization among small dispersed groups of indigenous Evenki peoples of Central Siberia. It draws this history into an examination of the destabilizing role of photographs in the production of history. While documenting the development of Soviet Nationalities policy in context of people who were considered to be socially and technologically ‘backwards,’ the project is resolutely committed to the demonstration of what I call photographic agitation. It performs this agitation all the while presenting a ‘nervous’ history of the momentous encounter between Soviet socialism and indigenous peoples in the Siberian North. This book will have broad appeal. Not only is it the first book to present a comprehensive treatment of the remote soviet outpost called the Culture Base but it adds to a lively historical and ethnological discourse on the colonial experience of the indigenous minorities of the Siberian North. Scholars working on histories of soviet socialism will be interested in this book for its counter-narrative of socialist modernity. For scholars interested in photography’s colonial histories, Agitating Images demonstrates the muddy role of photography in producing coherent scopic regimes.

Airport Urbanism studies the exponential leap of global air traffic since the 1980s and its implications for the planning and designing of five East and Southeast Asian cities. Focusing on the ...
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Airport Urbanism studies the exponential leap of global air traffic since the 1980s and its implications for the planning and designing of five East and Southeast Asian cities. Focusing on the low-cost, informal, and “transborder” transportation networks used by newer members of the flying public, the book uncovers the architecture of an emerging global mobility that has been inconspicuously inserted into buildings and places that are not typically associated with the infrastructure of international air travel. The primary focus is in Asia, with research conducted in five different locations: China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. Unique security clearance has allowed for access to the restricted zones of airports, unpublished maps, and photographs. In all, the book combines research tools from the humanities and design professions in order to advance an innovative approach to the study of rapidly developing Asian cities in relation to the increase of air travel.Less

Airport Urbanism : Infrastructure and Mobility in Asia

Max Hirsh

Published in print: 2016-03-15

Airport Urbanism studies the exponential leap of global air traffic since the 1980s and its implications for the planning and designing of five East and Southeast Asian cities. Focusing on the low-cost, informal, and “transborder” transportation networks used by newer members of the flying public, the book uncovers the architecture of an emerging global mobility that has been inconspicuously inserted into buildings and places that are not typically associated with the infrastructure of international air travel. The primary focus is in Asia, with research conducted in five different locations: China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. Unique security clearance has allowed for access to the restricted zones of airports, unpublished maps, and photographs. In all, the book combines research tools from the humanities and design professions in order to advance an innovative approach to the study of rapidly developing Asian cities in relation to the increase of air travel.

Humanity has sat at the center of philosophical thinking for too long. The recent advent of environmental philosophy and posthuman studies has widened our scope of inquiry to include ecosystems, ...
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Humanity has sat at the center of philosophical thinking for too long. The recent advent of environmental philosophy and posthuman studies has widened our scope of inquiry to include ecosystems, animals, and artificial intelligence. Yet the vast majority of the stuff in our universe, and even in our lives, remains beyond serious philosophical concern. This book develops an object-oriented ontology that puts things at the center of being—a philosophy in which nothing exists any more or less than anything else, in which humans are elements but not the sole or even primary elements of philosophical interest. And unlike experimental phenomenology or the philosophy of technology, this book’s alien phenomenology takes for granted that all beings interact with and perceive one another. This experience, however, withdraws from human comprehension and becomes accessible only through a speculative philosophy based on metaphor.Less

Alien Phenomenology, or What It's Like to Be a Thing

Ian Bogost

Published in print: 2012-04-01

Humanity has sat at the center of philosophical thinking for too long. The recent advent of environmental philosophy and posthuman studies has widened our scope of inquiry to include ecosystems, animals, and artificial intelligence. Yet the vast majority of the stuff in our universe, and even in our lives, remains beyond serious philosophical concern. This book develops an object-oriented ontology that puts things at the center of being—a philosophy in which nothing exists any more or less than anything else, in which humans are elements but not the sole or even primary elements of philosophical interest. And unlike experimental phenomenology or the philosophy of technology, this book’s alien phenomenology takes for granted that all beings interact with and perceive one another. This experience, however, withdraws from human comprehension and becomes accessible only through a speculative philosophy based on metaphor.

All Thoughts Are Equal is an introduction to the work of French philosopher François Laruelle and an experiment in nonhuman thinking. For Laruelle, standard forms of philosophy continue to dominate ...
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All Thoughts Are Equal is an introduction to the work of French philosopher François Laruelle and an experiment in nonhuman thinking. For Laruelle, standard forms of philosophy continue to dominate our models of what counts as exemplary thought and knowledge. By contrast, what Laruelle calls his “non-standard” approach attempts to bring democracy into thought, because all forms of thinking are equal in value. Philosophy–the discipline that posits itself as the power to think at the highest level–does not have a monopoly on reason. Such democracy clearly has relevance for the nonhuman, too. If non-philosophy hopes to extend what we mean by thinking beyond the boundaries set by classical approaches, then such a project has important implications as regards the existence and value of nonhuman forms of thought. This study strives to see how philosophy might appear when we look at it with non-philosophical and nonhuman eyes. And it does so by refusing to explain Laruelle through orthodox philosophy, opting instead to follow the structure of a film, Lars von Trier’s The Five Obstructions, to introduce the non-standard method. Von Trier’s documentary is a meditation on the creative constraints set by film, both technologically and aesthetically, and how they can push our experience of film, and of ourselves, beyond what is normally deemed “the perfect human.” All Thoughts Are Equal adopts those constraints in its own experiment by showing how Laruelle’s radically new style of philosophy is best introduced using our most nonhuman form of thought, that found in cinema itself.Less

All Thoughts Are Equal : Laruelle and Nonhuman Philosophy

John Ó Maoilearca

Published in print: 2015-09-15

All Thoughts Are Equal is an introduction to the work of French philosopher François Laruelle and an experiment in nonhuman thinking. For Laruelle, standard forms of philosophy continue to dominate our models of what counts as exemplary thought and knowledge. By contrast, what Laruelle calls his “non-standard” approach attempts to bring democracy into thought, because all forms of thinking are equal in value. Philosophy–the discipline that posits itself as the power to think at the highest level–does not have a monopoly on reason. Such democracy clearly has relevance for the nonhuman, too. If non-philosophy hopes to extend what we mean by thinking beyond the boundaries set by classical approaches, then such a project has important implications as regards the existence and value of nonhuman forms of thought. This study strives to see how philosophy might appear when we look at it with non-philosophical and nonhuman eyes. And it does so by refusing to explain Laruelle through orthodox philosophy, opting instead to follow the structure of a film, Lars von Trier’s The Five Obstructions, to introduce the non-standard method. Von Trier’s documentary is a meditation on the creative constraints set by film, both technologically and aesthetically, and how they can push our experience of film, and of ourselves, beyond what is normally deemed “the perfect human.” All Thoughts Are Equal adopts those constraints in its own experiment by showing how Laruelle’s radically new style of philosophy is best introduced using our most nonhuman form of thought, that found in cinema itself.